Voting Gauntlet: A Hero Rises 2024!

[Sunwoo]

I am somewhat salty right now because I really wanted Sanaki, the only one of the eight whom I really like as a character. (I'm also slightly salty because all the focus units being green isn't too good for me when I want to avoid skipping orbs and green orbs don't like to appear, so I was hoping to have at least one backup color present.) But I did prefer Peony and Dimitri and didn't care which of Claude or Camilla won, so I guess it's not all too bad. And Alear is fine herself. Also, a few years ago I supported Bride Micaiah in an AHR gauntlet and she lost first round too. And Sanaki is stapled to Micaiah. HMMMMM.

Speaking of which, the fuck is up with Edelgard and AHR? I'm actually starting to believe the only way she'll win one of these is if she somehow gets five versions of herself voted in.

[Humanoid]

For the freebie, I'm team anyone but Claude. Nothing personal, but I have him already and I dislike the art of this version.

What would it cost them to show a bit of decency and just have two AHR banners though, geez.

[Sunwoo]

Someone choose which of Peony or Dimitri I should go with next. I didn't expect Dimitri to win, so I thought I was joining Peony, but I'm like okay with both.

I'll join the team of whoever the first person to post after me suggests.

[Diovani Bressan]

First hour results:

• Peony (17 M) vs Dimitri (11 M)
• Claude (6 M) vs Alear (22 M)

About the banner results, I am half happy. My wish banner was Peony, Dimitri, Camilla and Sanaki.

Maybe I will do a single spark, but not much more than that.

[Humanoid]

The worst part about the result is that I decided to try for Gullveig on the Mythic banner instead (since I now want 2 out of the 3 grey units), and promptly spent all my orbs for zero 5-stars. (29 pulls)

I can spark eventually so it won't be a total loss, but it means that unless one of them turns up within the next 11 pulls, I'll have to pick between Gullveig and Alear.

[DefyingFates]

3 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

Speaking of which, the fuck is up with Edelgard and AHR? I'm actually starting to believe the only way she'll win one of these is if she somehow gets five versions of herself voted in.

I'm sure that'll happen sooner than later.

5 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I'm amazed Edelgard still cannot seem to win an AHR Voting Gauntlet. It's kind of hilarious?

I want IS to blacklist 3H for a few years already, but I hope IS takes the hint and stops spamming the house leaders if only so their dear Edelgard won't have to go through this again.

5 hours ago, Tybrosion said:

Also, imagine being an academy house leader who (yet again) doesn't get to appear on the AHR banner. RIP Adrestian bozo, for the sixth time in these AHR Voting Gauntlets.

But the 3H fans still got the last laugh by getting Claude in over Camilla who has the far better fodder and utility at the moment. Crazy how fast powercreep grew from the Wind Tribe banner, but still.

[Rinco]

I was aiming for Camilla merges on this banner, if possible, but now I don't think I'll do any pulls

[DefyingFates]

8 hours ago, Rinco said:

I was aiming for Camilla merges on this banner, if possible, but now I don't think I'll do any pulls

Not even for fodder? You said you wouldn't mind pulling the others for that, right?

[Tybrosion]

9 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

But the 3H fans still got the last laugh by getting Claude in over Camilla who has the far better fodder and utility at the moment. Crazy how fast powercreep grew from the Wind Tribe banner, but still.

Exactly. Even Claude managed to win, and on his first trip to a AHR VG too.

What excuse does Edelgard even have for her losses at this point?

[DefyingFates]

23 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

What excuse does Edelgard even have for her losses at this point?

At first it was because people just voted for Edelgard because it was Edelgard regardless of whether her being on the banner made any sense (i.e. they voted for og! and Brave Edelgard). Then they voted for Fallen Edelgard twice(?) despite every banner in the second half of 2021 (her debut year) having a F!Edelgard counter or two. Then she kept getting matched against units who were rarer or more useful and this year lost to the Green dream.

I'm sure there are people who voted against her for the meme too, but I guarantee there were also people voting "because it's Edelgard" too so that balances out. How much do you want to bet her absurdly high rankings are because random people on the internet saw "Fire Emblem character poll" and honed in on her whether they play Heroes or not? I'm certain that's what happened in the early years and I find it hard to believe people who actually pay attention to the game thought W!Edelgard was the most valuable Hero in this year's batch (I agree she's stupidly powerful, but not enough to rank first over all the other contenders).

... I didn't expect to get two whole paragraphs out of that. Hope that doesn't come off as ranting, though I admit I am getting sick of her being forced onto these polls more often than not.

[Sunwoo]

I think a good chunk of it is also just eternal bad VG luck. VG is pretty random (unless one team is so large their opponents can't catch up even with permanent multiplier) and it's hard to strategize with other people on your team. And apparently Edelgard is the biggest example of "gets fucked by VG randomness all the time".

Like, considering Edelgard's luck with VG, it's entirely possible that we could've had Fallen Edelgard and an actually good Edelgard going against each other in round 1, guaranteeing that one would move on, and somehow Fallen Edelgard would win.

[Rinco]

2 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Not even for fodder? You said you wouldn't mind pulling the others for that, right?

I could, but my main reason for pulling was merging Camilla. The others appearing in the summoning would be "happy accidents". But pulling just for the fodder I'm not that excited.

I'm still debating, but I feel that saving the orbs for when Camilla comes back would be better for my plans

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Tybrosion said:

What excuse does Edelgard even have for her losses at this point?

Bad luck.

Winning a Voting Gauntlet as the favorite is like hitting 3 Hydro Pumps in a row. Each individual roll might be in your favor, but sometimes luck just isn't on your side. And sometimes, luck just really, really isn't on your side.

[DefyingFates]

6 minutes ago, Rinco said:

I'm still debating, but I feel that saving the orbs for when Camilla comes back would be better for my plans

Yeah, that makes sense, especially if you already have one or more of the current candidates. Best of luck with your saving!

[vikingsfan92]

50 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Bad luck.

Winning a Voting Gauntlet as the favorite is like hitting 3 Hydro Pumps in a row. Each individual roll might be in your favor, but sometimes luck just isn't on your side. And sometimes, luck just really, really isn't on your side.

I feel like that is an easy cop out answer that I hope IS doesnt go with.  If they absolutely must use VG again (which regardless of this result I feel like needs a shake up because it's kind of stale regardless of my bias against VG imo) then there absolutely needs for IS to refine the vg to make sure everyone has a chance to win.  Its not very interesting if there are chacters guaranteed to lose or win. And with how often certain charcters lose (its not just Edelgard) you can only call it bad luck for so long before it becomes clear other things are going on that need adjustments. I personally feel like it was needed ages ago but I think more and more people are going to want reworks as history continues to repeat itself.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, vikingsfan92 said:

I feel like that is an easy cop out answer that I hope IS doesnt go with.

No, that's exactly what's happening. There's no conspiracy going on behind the scenes.

No one is guaranteed a win or a loss, but every time a Voting Gauntlet is run, 7 of the 8 characters must necessarily lose. That Edelgard has ended up in the losing 7 every time is unlucky, but not out of the ordinary.

To say that someone deserves to win a Voting Gauntlet is the same as saying that the 7 other contestants deserve to lose solely for the sake of giving that someone a win, and that's equally not fair to those 7.

 

As it is right now, the probability that the larger team wins is slightly higher than the ratio of the team sizes. (The math is pretty easy. If you want me to elaborate, I'd be happy to.) If you don't think that to be fair, that what split would you consider to be fair (ignoring the mechanics of how to get that split to happen in the first place and just focusing on what kind of split you deem fair)?

[Sunwoo]

The only time VG wins matter is during AHR's first round anyway, so I don't think it's a case of "we need to fix VG" and more "maybe we should find another way of deciding AHR's banner. Or give us two banners".

[Tybrosion]

IS is entirely capable of making a banner that's just "pick whoever you want to summon from this group". That is exactly what they did with the AHR Engage Cup that they held a bit before Engage's release, and they let us pick between twelve units from that.

IS could easily do the same thing with the top eight of A Hero Rises, but they apparently find it funny to instead let Voting Gauntlets determine what we get.

[Sunwoo]

49 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

IS is entirely capable of making a banner that's just "pick whoever you want to summon from this group". That is exactly what they did with the AHR Engage Cup that they held a bit before Engage's release, and they let us pick between twelve units from that.

IS could easily do the same thing with the top eight of A Hero Rises, but they apparently find it funny to instead let Voting Gauntlets determine what we get.

Wow, I totally forgot the AHR Engage Cup thing existed.

But I suppose that's just more reason why they should put all of the chosen eight on a banner.

[Othin]

4 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

As it is right now, the probability that the larger team wins is slightly higher than the ratio of the team sizes. (The math is pretty easy. If you want me to elaborate, I'd be happy to.) If you don't think that to be fair, that what split would you consider to be fair (ignoring the mechanics of how to get that split to happen in the first place and just focusing on what kind of split you deem fair)?

I'm interested in this math!

[Humanoid]

Would be interesting to see if people would prefer no gamification whatsoever, and have #1 Edelgard be the free unit, and the top four of her, Camilla, Alear and Gullveig being the banner.

I'm a big supporter of pure fairness over spectacle so it'd certainly be my position, just as I prefer sports which operate as pure home-and-away double round-robin leagues (like most domestic football leagues in Europe) as opposed to having the season end with finals/playoffs. Unfortunately pretty much every sport here in Australia is obsessed with having the big commercial bonanza that is a "grand final" and I hate it. I understand American sports are the same, if not moreso.

Edited March 4 by Humanoid

[Ice Dragon]

Just now, Othin said:

I'm interested in this math!

The probability of a team winning is the same as the probability that they have more points in any given hour. You can therefore calculate the probability of each side winning indirectly by calculating how many hours it takes for the smaller team to retake the lead after a disadvantage multiplier from the larger team.

The floor calculation assumes that players only spend flags on hours that they have a disadvantage. In this case, the size of the team is exactly proportional to the number of points they earn in an hour, and so if the larger team has x times more players as the smaller team, it will take exactly x hours for the smaller team to earn the same number of points to retake the lead.

• If the teams are equal size (x = 1), the odds have a floor of 1:1.
• If the larger team has 2 times the number of players, the odds have a floor of 2:1.
• If the larger team has 3 times the number of players, the odds have a floor of 3:1.
• etc.

This is super-easy to do in your head and shouldn't be too egregiously off from actual numbers as long as team sizes aren't horrendously different.

 

A super-conservative ceiling calculation assumes that players spend the same number of flags on hours that they have advantage on as they have disadvantage on. Because the winner is functionally determined only by the last rubber banding of the score, we can estimate using the multipliers from the last hour. I won't go into detail, but due to the fact that the multipliers increase with time and due to the fact that the ratio of the multipliers also increases with time, using the multipliers from the last hour will overestimate the number of hours it will take for the smaller team to retake the lead even more, which is exactly what we want from a ceiling. From this, we get that the number of hours it takes for the smaller team to retake the lead with these assumptions is [(3.69x - 1) ÷ (3.69 - x)].

Spoiler

Basically, when the larger team has disadvantage, the larger team gets 12x points and the smaller team gets 3.25 points, both multiplied by a constant (the number of people spending flags on the smaller team each hour), during that hour.

When the smaller team has disadvantage, the larger team gets 3.25x points and the smaller team gets 12 points, both multiplied by the same constant, each hour.

When solving for the number of hours it takes for the smaller team to get the same number of points as the larger team, it takes [(3.69x - 1) ÷ (3.69 - x)] hours. The 3.69 comes from 12 ÷ 3.25 = 3.69.

• If the teams are equal size (x = 1), the odds have a ceiling of 1:1. (This is a sanity check to make sure nothing went horribly wrong in the calculations.)
• If the larger team has 2 times the number of players, the odds have a ceiling of 3.78:1.
• If the larger team has 3 times the number of players, the odds have a ceiling of 14.6:1.
• When the larger team has 3.69 times the number of players, the smaller team cannot catch up ever.

With how extremely quickly the odds increase, this estimate is probably a bit too egregiously conservative of a ceiling. But, we now have a method to calculate with other simple flag spending assumptions.

 

Using the same method as before, let's use a more reasonable estimate that players spend half as many flags during advantage. This gives us [(7.38x - 1) ÷ (7.38 - x)] hours.

• If the teams are equal size (x = 1), the odds are 1:1. (Another sanity check.)
• If the larger team has 2 times the number of players, the odds are 2.56:1.
• If the larger team has 3 times the number of players, the odds are 4.83:1.

So there you have it. A slightly-better-than-back-of-the-envelope estimate puts you between x:1 and the numbers above.

 

2 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Would be interesting to see if people would prefer no gamification whatsoever, and have #1 Edelgard be the free unit, and the top four of her, Camilla, Alear and Gullveig being the banner.

I'm a big supporter of pure fairness over spectacle so it'd certainly be my position, just as I prefer sports which operate as pure home-and-away double round-robin leagues (like most domestic football leagues in Europe) as opposed to having the season end with finals/playoffs.

I like the selfish position of "I like it this way when this way benefits me more and the other way when that way benefits me more", but with it not being a big deal either way.

Because this single banner is far less impactful than the Legendary/Mythic/Emblem and Remix schedules which actively hate me and make some units share a banner with the new unit a bunch of times and other units never share a banner with the new unit ever, which is why I've gotten 34 copies of Seiros, but only 3 copies of Triandra.

[vikingsfan92]

7 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

No, that's exactly what's happening. There's no conspiracy going on behind the scenes.

No one is guaranteed a win or a loss, but every time a Voting Gauntlet is run, 7 of the 8 characters must necessarily lose. That Edelgard has ended up in the losing 7 every time is unlucky, but not out of the ordinary.

To say that someone deserves to win a Voting Gauntlet is the same as saying that the 7 other contestants deserve to lose solely for the sake of giving that someone a win, and that's equally not fair to those 7.

 

As it is right now, the probability that the larger team wins is slightly higher than the ratio of the team sizes. (The math is pretty easy. If you want me to elaborate, I'd be happy to.) If you don't think that to be fair, that what split would you consider to be fair (ignoring the mechanics of how to get that split to happen in the first place and just focusing on what kind of split you deem fair)?

For starters I am talking about IS more than you and me. It's a bad thing imo if they don't look to see if things work as they should. Everything that has existed will have flaws as time passes so leaving VG as is doesn't make sense.

Also I think you are misrepsenting my point abit If you think conspiracy is the only way this happens or even what I think is most likely. Which is the system doesn't handle scale well to the point it screws over certain chacters more than it should which isn't intended. 

Sure it can be general trend that popular people are more likely to win but that doesn't mean the system in place scales properly at all levels.  Just because it works in close with two charcters proximity doesn't mean it scales correctly when there are gigantic gaps between the two.  It happens with other extremly popular chacters as well but it happens more so with Edelgard than others.  

Plenty of systems have been designed to do something but don't actually live up to what is expected when actually put into action. Live testing exists because systems can look brilliant only to be found it is missing important bits. Some point repeated events need to lose all excuses around them and treated just as face value.  I have felt that time has long passed personally especially with its elevated importantance in ahr.

Vg is no diffrent than this and it's time for it to be let go at the very least AHR deciding if not out right scraping. 

Edit: Also there is a diffrence between winning round 1 and winning the whole thing.  I am not saying that anyone has to win. Its not healthy if a slot become essentially a first round bye slot.

 

Edited March 4 by vikingsfan92

[Ice Dragon]

8 hours ago, vikingsfan92 said:

Sure it can be general trend that popular people are more likely to win but that doesn't mean the system in place scales properly at all levels.  Just because it works in close with two charcters proximity doesn't mean it scales correctly when there are gigantic gaps between the two.  It happens with other extremly popular chacters as well but it happens more so with Edelgard than others.  

Actual numbers, please.

"It happens"? Yes, of course it happens. Hydro Pump misses. A lot. Yet has an 80% chance to hit. "Hydro Pump misses a lot" is not evidence that the 80% chance to hit is not actually 80%.

[Tybrosion]

40 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Actual numbers, please.

"It happens"? Yes, of course it happens. Hydro Pump misses. A lot. Yet has an 80% chance to hit. "Hydro Pump misses a lot" is not evidence that the 80% chance to hit is not actually 80%.

As someone who has played a lot of Challenge Cup in Pokemon Stadium 2, you really should be using Thunder in your example instead.

Yes I know it has worse accuracy (70%), but that 70% sure feels more like a coin flip (50%) a lot of the time.

Coincidentally, the average VG match is also essentially a coin flip.